Sketch Fearless : sketching the NYPL

Hope you're having a great day today. It's Monday, July 27th, 5:19 PM here in New Jersey. Um, yeah, I'm just outside doing some sketching, and I'm gonna just sketch— do a quick sketch here inspired by the New York Public Library, NYPL. I was in NYC Saturday and It was great walking around, and I took a bunch of pictures. So I'm gonna just use— uh, do a sketch here based on a picture I had taken, and it's gonna be fast, loose, in my kind of fearless sketching style. So, uh, stay tuned for a few minutes and let's do some sketching. I am sketching in an Ugly Books sketchbook. Love the color of this paper. It's almost— I say it's chartreuse, but I don't know the actual color, but it looks chartreuse-ish to me. That's hard to say. Um, but yeah, and I have a white gel pen I'm using as well. Maybe we'll throw some color down. We'll see how it goes. Again, this is going to be really kind of rapid fire, and I'm going to distort these perspectives. I really just want to capture a cool vibe, so you can really throw some fun angles on here, kind of exaggerate some things a little bit. My goal is to never duplicate. It's always just to have fun and sketch a vibe, you know. So don't be afraid to throw down lines, colors, anything to get that, that fun vibe you're going for. And if you don't know what you're going for, it's still throw down lines and colors and just have fun and see what, what turns out. That's basically, I would say, 85% of the stuff I do is just— even maybe even more. I just want to throw stuff on paper and just see what turns out because that's the fun part. Hope you're having a great day. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. If you like this kind of live sketching stuff, I would love a thumbs up there. Let's get those out there a little bit. Share the fun, the creativity. You know, I always say, um, creativity— let's use our creativity for positivity. Am I going to sketch the entire facade of the building? No, I'm just doing a little portion of it and That's so fun. I love these vignettes or snapshots. I think one of the things that stops people from sketching architecture is we think we need to sketch the entire building. Um, you don't have to do that. You can just sketch whatever kind of captures your interest. It could be a door, a window, it could be a stair, it could be any— anything that just kind of cost you. So here I just have kind of a top section of the NYPL going. Let me show you, let's flip back here quick. So here's an example. This is, this is part, a real tiny section of the JP Morgan Chase headquarters in New York City. Real small section of a huge building, but I was really interested in just this kind of entry of the building um, it has these cool natural rock, uh, stone walls. Uh, check out the JPMorgan Chase headquarters, it's a really interesting building. And then thank you for the thumbs up. Um, and then here, this is the Gapsto Bridge in Central Park. And here I just had to focus on just a portion of the, the bridge. I didn't get the whole bridge. And, uh, you know, I made it my own. Are these the actual colors? No, they're not. I just went with a vibe and what I was kind of feeling in the moment. So those are just some examples, and that's what I'm doing with the NYPL here. Same idea. And I'm really enjoying this this white gel pen look. I've been doing it now for a couple months, and it's just— I don't know, it's just something really intriguing to me about it. You know, we don't always have to use black pen or marker or whatever on white paper. That's why I kind of love these Uglybook sketchbooks. They're just such fun colored colors. If you guys want to know like this tools and equipment and gear I love sketching with, go to my webpage theinkspiredlife.com/tools and you can see like some of my faves I love, love using, and there's some discounts there as well. So check out theinspiredlife.com/tools. You can see the stuff I'm sketching with these days. All right, let's, um, let's throw down some color. We're gonna go purple. I love using purple, and I'll show you why. So we got some purple. This is a Sharpie Creative Marker. No, they don't sponsor me. I just love talking about stuff I love using. But hey, Sharpie, feel free to send some my way. Just kidding. And here's what we're gonna do, watch this. So I literally just bought a bunch of these. I have a workshop I'm teaching in Brooklyn on Friday— on Saturday, Saturday, not Friday, um, and we're going to be using creative markers in the workshop. It's going to be such a fun, fun 90 minutes. I'm so excited to be teaching that. We're gonna do what we're doing here, just loose style architecture-inspired sketching, New York City-inspired sketching. And I'm throwing down this— here, let's do this here. I'm going to show you why I love using purple, or it could be any dark color. I have blue here as well, but let's, let's do the purple. Feel free to say hello in the chat. I'll be nice, I promise, I promise, I promise I'll be nice. All right, here's what we're gonna do. Actually, you know what, we're gonna do a little more in here. I've had people say, what are you doing? You, you just covered the lines you made. And yeah, that's true, but I'll show you why. All right, we're gonna break out a gel pen again, and here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna do some hatch lines, some diagonal hatch lines here, and it helps create a little bit of interest, a little bit of depth. Um, let's try this brand. This is not my favorite brand. I love these better. Let's see if it works better. Yeah, this brand gel pen seems to work better than that last one I was just using. So throwing those diagonal lines in there, we just create a little bit of interest, a little bit of depth on there. And up here we're gonna put these, these dentils in. I believe they're called dentils. As an architect, I should know what they're called, right? Dentils, D-E-N-T-I-L, kind of details, but they pop out against the purple. So that was one of the reasons I wanted to do that. Pro tip: if you're using gel pens, they, um, need— they need a little time to dry. I tend to smear them. You can see I'm wearing some here on my palm, but it's not art unless you wear it, right? So I'm officially wearing it. That means it's artwork. There you go. We're gonna do that purple idea here. I want to add some quote-unquote details. My details are still very loose, very wonky. Again, it's about embracing imperfection. Imperfection, not perfection. Let's see, we're going to wrap this up in a couple minutes. All right, let's see. So we're going to do— there's some details up here in this kind of soffit area, and we're going to pull out This cornice area, we're just going to add some lines in here. Again, I threw that purple on there so the lines would pop out more. So this is the New York Public Library, a very, very small section of it. Uh, and let's do the same thing on this side. Let's see, we're gonna do it right in this corner. Can you guys see that? There you go. It's gonna pull out some of the stacked stonework over here.

Pretty cool.

You might just stick with these, these two colors. Again, feel free to ask any questions if you like. Then we'll just add some— a little bit of detail to these columns here, make them look rounder. I might actually— you know what, we might break out a third color. I just had an idea, or maybe not. I was thinking of another color, but let's see if we can swing it without it. Let's do this. This is like a— some kind of a stone carving or plaque here. Hey, thank you for the thumbs up! I see a couple. I love that. Thank you so much. There we go. So we have a little bit of detail there for the— this kind of plaque area. So I'm literally just capturing a very, very small portion of the NYPL here. Hopefully you can see it all. Hey, Jen's in the house! Jen, good to see you. I I hope you're well, my friend. Long time no see. Hope you're having a great day. It's always good seeing you. And let's see, let's throw down— I don't know, do I add another color? Part of me wants to come back and use the same color palette I was using in these sketches. So the purple— this has purple, yellow, and aqua. Although I figured out what they call it.

Lake—

is it Lake Green? I think Sharpie is calling this color Lake Green. So it's kind of a weird name. It looks turquoise to me. But, um, so I like that color palette. So maybe we'll just continue in this book. We'll throw some of that on here. So I kind of want the columns to pop a little more. Good to see you too. Hey, thanks Jen, always good seeing you. I know you're a busy, busy camper, so I appreciate you popping on. Now let's do it. Why not, guys? Let's throw some So I am super excited to be teaching a workshop at Stationery Fest this Saturday. Um, it's gonna be so fun. So if anybody out there watching, if you're gonna be there, let me know. It's sold out, 15 people, so that's really cool. Um, and I'm interested, I'm excited and a little nervous, but we're just— we're gonna have fun. That's what it's about, right? It'll be fun. We're just gonna be doing the same thing we're doing here, loose style sketching a little bit. So now we have that turquoise on there. Just trying to pull these columns out a little bit. We're gonna add some white details on there, and I feel like we need a little bit of color up here maybe. Hey, thank you for the thumbs up. I appreciate that so much. If you like what you're seeing, feel free to give me a thumbs up. I'd love for you to subscribe to the channel if you haven't, because we do fun stuff like this. It's so cool. Oops, it's not dry enough yet. We're expecting some wicked rain here tomorrow, like a lot of rain. I'm wondering if the air is just— the moisture in the air right now is taking this, uh, the markers a little bit longer to dry than usual. So you can kind of see, I'll hold it up a little bit. I miss that. Yeah, me too. I haven't seen, I haven't seen Gigi in a long time. I miss all my regular viewers out there. Um, it's Monday, so I should be doing my Monday night live stream tonight, so around 9 o'clock PM Eastern time, that'd be— I should be back on doing some sketching tonight. Love to see you out there. So shout out to, um, everybody watching live right now. I have a few of you guys, so thank you so much. Don't be afraid to say hello. We're— we got a good group here, and I am gonna wrap this up in 2 minutes because I have to actually go make dinner. I'm making— I'm gonna make some homemade meatballs tonight. How cool is that? Gonna make some meatballs. All right, let's just kind of add one more detail up in the top here. If you're just joining me, this sketch is, is Inkspired.

Get—

see what I did there? Inkspired. By the, um, NYPL, New York Public Library, and it's just this tiny, tiny portion. Hey, Kimono El Kimono said hi. Hi, El Kimono, good to see you. Hope you're having a great day. Jan, take care. Have a great night. It was good seeing you. Be well, be well. It's always great seeing you. All right, so a little more detail up there. All right, more scribbly on here. All right, pretty cool. Let's hold it up a little closer. We'll wrap up. I don't think my camera— there we go. Might be making it blurry. I don't know why. It's my phone, actually. All right, so that is a quick— we'll write it on here. And I'm not with that one. NYPL 2026. Boom!

Awesome.

If you like this kind of sketching, give me a thumbs up. I would love that. Subscribe if you haven't to my YouTube channel. I think we're almost at 1,000 50, 10, 1050. Be so cool to reach that number. And, um, yeah, I, I appreciate your time out there. So have an amazing, amazing rest of your day, everybody. I might be live streaming tonight around 9:00 Eastern Time, uh, with some more sketching. And here's a look at some of the other things in this book.

Step—

oh, it's a WIP, work in progress, this sketchbook. And I love that sketch. That's a view from, um, in Central Park looking towards the Plaza Hotel. It was a fun sketch to do. All right, until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively. And embrace imperfection. Thank you for the thumbs up. Nice seeing you, Kimono. Nice meeting you. Hope to see you back on a future stream. Shout out to Jen for saying hi in the chat as well. See you.